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Trademark names that start with a lowercase letter -- do we cap the lowercase letter when it starts a sentence?

E.g.:

iTunes is a hot spot in the app store.

Not: ITunes is a hot spot ...

iPhone sales have plummeted since the inception of the Samsung S5.

Not: IPhone sales have plummeted since the inception of the Samsung S5.

Sven Yargs
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whippoorwill
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  • Which style guide are you following? – choster Jan 20 '15 at 04:37
  • I only own The Gregg Reference Manual, 10th Edition, and this topic isn't in there. – whippoorwill Jan 20 '15 at 04:42
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    While it would depend upon the style guide or editorial policies, in my own writing, I'd tend not to capitalize the first letter of a trademark in the situations you mention. But I would also be likely to construct the sentence in a way which does not raise the question. For example, in the former example, about iTunes, since there is no distinct physical location of iTunes in the app store--it's from the cloud--I'd write the sentence "The iTunes section is a hot spot in the App Store." (IIRC, "App Store" is also a trademark of Apple, and is therefore capitalized.) – brasshat Jan 20 '15 at 05:06
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    I'd treat the second example similarly: "iPhone" is an adjective to "sales", so I'd construct the sentence "The sales of iPhones have plummeted...". – brasshat Jan 20 '15 at 05:07

2 Answers2

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I worked for years at two technology periodicals—one dedicated to PCs and the other to Apple products. For the longest time, the two periodicals had different styles for handling "iWhatever" product names, as well as product names with such intendedly eye-catching typographical treatments as "alllowercase" or "ALLCAPS" or "InterCapPing" or "hOWABOUTHIS" or "Cute*Punc|tuation" or "OMGiHATETHISPRODUCT!!!"

At the Apple-focused periodical, Apple product-naming conventions were sacrosanct: You'd as soon call Steve Jobs a martinet as capitalize the first n in "iPod nano" once the great corporation had decreed the correct treatment to use. This, of course, led to slippage on other fronts. If "iPod nano," why not "Yahoo!" and "c|net" and "E*TRADE" and "nVIDIA" and some weird product name with superscript letters and indecipherable Led Zeplin–like icons?

At the PC-focused periodical, we drew a line in the sand and held our position behind it for years: Initial-cap product names, whether the purveyor did or not; reduce intercaps and all-cap interiors to lowercase, and remove all in-name and end-name punctuation. This yielded "Ipod Nano," "Yahoo," "Cnet," Etrade," and "Nvidia"—and countless letters to the editor from consumers outraged on behalf of the poor, disrespected product names. You'd think that removing the screaming final-word treatment from "Gold Disk ASTOUND!" was a personal affront to every person who owned a copy of the program.

All of this is by way of submitting the thesis that publishers are under no obligation to product vendors—or their intellectual property lawyers—to replicate the exact capitalization and punctuation used in a product name, any more than they are obliged to replicate the typeface and color of a company's logo whenever they mention the company by name. As a publisher, you get to decide how far your periodicals will go in reinforcing the vendors' marketing decisions (because that's what product-name typography decisions are) about eyeball capture and brand recognition and shepherding potential customers into the "buying funnel."

With regard to capitalizing or lowercasing the i in iPhone or the e in eBay when the word happens to begin a sentence, I would advise you to use the same capping and lowercasing that you've chosen to use when the product name comes up in the middle of a sentence or in a stand-alone label. Regardless of how you've decided to style the product name there, it is a proper name, and it doesn't cease to be a proper name—or suddenly become a less adequate proper name—just because it pops up in a headline or at the beginning of a sentence.

Sven Yargs
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The Wikipedia Style Guide has this to say on the matter:

Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter

Trademarks that officially begin with a lowercase letter raise several problems because they break the normal capitalization rules of English that trademarks, as proper names, are written with initial capital letters wherever they occur in a sentence.

  • With the exception that immediately follows, trademarks rendered without any capitals are capitalized:

    • avoid: The television show thirtysomething is a television show that could have been sponsored by adidas, but not by craigslist, because the show was over before craigslist existed.

    • instead, use: The television show Thirtysomething is a television show that could have been sponsored by Adidas, but not by Craigslist, because the show was over before Craigslist existed.

  • The exception is trademarks that begin with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter are not capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules:

    • avoid: He said that EBay is where he bought his IPod.

    • instead, use: He said that eBay is where he bought his iPod.

  • In the case of this exception, rephrase to avoid beginning sentences with such trademarks:

    • avoid: eBay is where he bought his iPod.

    • instead, use something like: He bought his iPod on eBay.

So, to summarise: while stating that trademarks that begin with a single lowercase letter should be rendered as such, they also recommend avoiding using such trademarks at the start of a sentence. Not much help really, although my preference would be to continue to use a lowercase letter at the start of a sentence.

Incidentally, from what I have read, (although I don't have a reliable reference at present) the protection of trademarks is not dependent on case.

Phil M Jones
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